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Author, philologist and mythopoet JRR Tolkien was born on January 3rd, 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province, part of South Africa) to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857–1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, née Suffield (1870–1904)…

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, Oxford University professor, and author of the globally beloved fantasy epics The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was born eleventy-seven years ago today, on January 3rd, 1892, in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, a British colony and a province of the Union of South Africa.

On November 16th, 1917 John Francis Reuel Tolkien was born to future Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien and his wife, Edith Mary Tolkien (née Bratt). He was their first child of four. Father Tolkien passed away in January 2003, while denying allegations that he had sexually assaulted a teenage congregant in the 1960s.

Trivia question: Who is the only member of the Lord of the Rings movie cast who actually met author JRR Tolkien? The answer is Christopher Lee, who portrayed Saruman. And today, May 27th, is Lee’s 87th birthday.

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